


split loyalties

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cersei Wins, F/F, Future Fic, Grief/Mourning, Post-Season/Series 07, exchange treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2018-12-23 06:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11984181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: Followers of the Lord of Light have said the night is dark and full of terrors. She thinks a lot about the Lord of Light these days. She may not believe in him, but she cannot in good conscience say his followers are wrong, not after what she’s seen. And definitely not after what she’s done. The night is also cold and long and miserable. Perhaps they should add that to their prayers. With the Long Winter upon them, it would only make sense.





	split loyalties

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/gifts).



> To rosecake: I loved the tags you chose for this exchange and enjoyed writing this so much. Thanks for leaving such cool prompts.
> 
> To everyone: please note the Choose Not to Warn Archive Warning. See end notes for more extensive warnings.

Brienne wakes, sudden and angry, her heart squeezed tight by her throat as it tries to climb its way out of her mouth or seems to, pulsing as hard as it is. Red and gold spark behind her eyelids. The colors are a remnant of a dream she’d rather forget, the remnant of a _reality_ she’d rather forget.

Winterfell has fallen.

Again.

And not to the Night King or to Northern lords with short memories and shorter alliances nor even to Littlefinger’s careless machinations, no. No. Lady Sansa had seen them through that and more. For a time, she’d saved Winterfell from itself. Even as Jon and Daenerys stormed what remained of the Wall, Sansa had protected her home. So many fought and bled and died for the seat of the North, and for their Wardeness. The pristine snow was turned a vile, unnatural pink in the fighting, flecked with viscera, black and splotchy, slimy red and warm enough to melt the ice just a little. If Brienne closes her eyes, the gore and carnage wrought that day flickers as vivid as when it happened.

And yet Winterfell, the complex, the lifeless stone wreck of it persists. But to what purpose? And for whom? There is no living Stark there anymore. Nor will there be.

Even the crypts are likely to be desecrated.

All memory of the Starks, with their direwolf banners and honorable, foolish hearts, will be lost.

“You’re brooding,” Sansa says, speaking out of the darkness. She does this now. In each encampment Brienne chooses, she grows stiller, more quiet. Except for when she speaks to Brienne. Each word she offers up is clear and carefully refined, the only warmth left to her in these times. Sometimes, those words are the only things that keep Brienne going.

Scrambling upward from her bedroll, Brienne pushes herself to her feet and sits near the fire pit. The log she chooses is cold and hard.

Followers of the Lord of Light have said the night is dark and full of terrors. She thinks a lot about the Lord of Light these days. She may not believe in him, but she cannot in good conscience say his followers are wrong, not after what she’s seen. And definitely not after what she’s done. The night is also cold and long and miserable. Perhaps they should add that to their prayers. With the Long Winter upon them, it would only make sense.

“I’m certain I’m not.” The fire—small and kept purposefully so—crackles as Brienne ministers to it with a stick. It almost feels cooler with it than without, as though it needs to pull all the heat from the air to keep itself lit. She knows that’s not how fire works, but the mind is a funny thing. The mind, after all, thinks all sorts of nonsense and clings to any explanation it can find. And right now, it is still far too cold. Easier to blame the fire than herself.

Sansa, dressed in cream and white and wrapped round in furs of equal delicacy, her hair turned brittle—has it grown paler?—sits next to her. She tucks her booted feet into the small drifts of snow that have built up around the log they occupy and Brienne aches to berate her for it. They’ll get wet, her shoes will, and then she might develop frostbite. And then…

And then what does it really matter?

“You are.” Sansa’s voice dips low, so much wiser than her years would suggest. “I’ve watched you brood often enough to know what it looks like.” She smiles to temper the weight of that truth. Sansa always had been able to find a measure of kindness for Brienne where there should have been none—and where none was truly needed. Her eyes glimmer, reflecting the light of the fire. Brienne knows their color to be an ice-cool blue, chipped and sharp, but here they take on a reddish, demonic hue, as though she is not herself any longer. “There is nothing left to brood over anyway.”

Brienne frowns, a quip worthy of Jaime Lannister on her lips. She could say that there is always _some_ thing on which to brood. But there is no humor in her, not that there ever has been, and her heart cannot handle the thought of Jaime and all that has conspired since they saw one another last. What his family has done… What he had _allowed_ his family, his sister, to do…

Brienne closes her eyes.

For the span of three breaths, she is alone. And then she opens her eyes again and Sansa has shifted closer. Sansa’s hand reaches for hers, but she can barely feel it through their joined gloves. There was a time when this would have been enough to send Brienne’s heart into a clumsy stumble. Instead, her blood freezes in her veins; her heart turns to stone. It is a long, desperate moment before it resumes its usual pace. Sansa’s touch does this to her now.

It should not be like this.

It _should not_ be like _this_.

“Ser Brienne,” she says, while Brienne thinks, _I am a protector of nothing. I am no knight_. “It is done. There are no oaths left to fulfill. No debts to pay. You don’t owe me. You’re free.”

If she had anything left in her, tears would prickle in Brienne’s eyes. But beneath her scuffed and dented and rusting armor, she is hollow. Oathkeeper remains sharp despite her active neglect of it, but that’s more luck than anything else. There is nothing left to fight. Brienne does not even wish to fight.

“Go back to Tarth,” Sansa insists. “You’ll be safe there.”

When Brienne looks at her now, she is as insubstantial as the wind, porcelain white. Her lips seem bluer and when she tilts her head, it’s eerie how little she actually moves.

Her hair _has_ grown more pale, Brienne decides, as red pours in erratic pulses from her chest to prove just how red Sansa’s hair is not. It has done so every night since Winterfell, forming a rich, carmine bib down the front of her dress. Brienne hates it as much as she hates the small, damning slit in the dress that sits above Sansa’s heart.

If Brienne listens, she can hear the sound of Oathkeeper sliding between Sansa’s ribs. She can hear Sansa’s insistence that she will not leave Winterfell alive; she will not become Cersei’s captive; she will not be hunted.

More rational heads would have prevailed if Brienne had believed there was any possibility of escape. But Jaime, too-late Jaime, too-good and too-twisted by love to do the entirely right or entirely wrong thing Jaime, would not strike a killing blow and he could not guarantee anyone’s safety, not even his own. And for once, Brienne couldn’t throw herself at a pointless cause.

Sansa is right. There’s nothing left. Not even straggling wights haunt these woods. Jon and Daenerys saw to that. If there are more to come, that will be Cersei’s problem to deal with.

“Brienne,” she continues, her voice fading as it always does this time of night, “I would have wanted you to be safe.”

“And I, the same. Yet look where we are.” There is more bitterness in her voice than she remembers: to match the longing in Sansa’s voice that is more her own than Sansa’s, she thinks, for Sansa is not here to long for anything. Brienne misses Sansa; she loved Sansa. And now Sansa is dead, just like her other loves, the others she must mourn.

“Yes,” Sansa answers, not an answer at all. “Look where we are.”

A wasteland, Brienne estimates, snowy and frigid cold, Cersei’s forces potentially around every twist of the road they take.

Sansa gazes into the flame and Brienne knows she will here no more from her specter tonight. Sometimes she flickers and fades from view before Brienne slips into sleep. But when Brienne is awoken from nightmares, Sansa tends to linger, a silent sentinel at her side. How long it will be until Brienne is rid of her, Brienne cannot say. She doesn’t dare admit that she hopes she will never leave entirely. This trace is all she has left of her dearest charge.

Perhaps she will return to the Sapphire Isle. It would be as fitting a punishment as she can imagine.

Brienne returns to her bedroll, situates herself uncomfortably upon it to ponder the possibilities. “Goodnight, Lady Sansa.”

Sansa does not respond.

Brienne expects nothing more, but she wants nothing less.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: major character death


End file.
